Fascinating food in New York and occasionally farther afield

Rispoli Ices

(The Brooklyn storefront is closed; the Staten Island shops are still open.) The Rispoli Pastry Shop, which decamped several summers ago from Bensonhurst to Staten Island, was a neighborhood favorite not only for baked goods but also for housemade Italian ices. Many of those ices are available once again at a tiny Brooklyn storefront, made to the original recipes.

A few of the colors are too vibrant to be natural — the blueberry glows as bright as a jungle butterfly — but the flavors I've tried (small, $2) are pure and not overly sweet. Lemon, speckled with the occasional bit of zest, tastes like lemon and not sugar, and the cantaloupe, except for the icy texture, might have been scooped from a wedge of the fresh fruit.